The Intern
by Surreptitious Chi X
Summary: Series of short scenes exploring events surrounding the meeting of Joker and Dr. Quinzel. Characterization of Joker as opposing.
1. The Day Room

A rainy day in fall, the day room of the well kept but sterile asylum, and the single window in the room dominated by the Joker, lounging on an awful maroon sofa faded to ugly magenta. The reinforced window was blurry with rain and smudged by fingerprints, some the Joker's, and some from the other patients longing to be outside and feel something real. He sat brooding, an expression on his face such that no one wanted to get close to him.

He'd been captured yesterday. That always meant trouble. The beating courtesy of Batman and the drugs foisted on him by the staff left him with an unconquerable headache. If there was anything responsible for psychotic behavior on the part of the Joker, it was having a headache.

Therefore, the other seasoned inmates kept on the other side of the room while bothering him.

"Joker," the Scarecrow called. His mask held a hideous grin, completely obscuring whatever expression might've been on his real face at the moment. "The Riddler has deduced that we are getting a new intern as of Tuesday the 21st. You might be interested in this one. She's a female."

"They should have known better than to try to hide something from The Riddler," Two-Face said. His good side had an expression of disdain on it. As always, his bad side was too twisted to really read any expression off it.

The Joker slowly traced a smile on the window with his finger and turned around. His face had that calm look. The bad calm look. "Are you implying…dear friends…that I would need the attention of some lowly intern to spark a new love life?"

They didn't really know how to respond to this. Two-Face shook his head, trying to look as innocent as possible and handicapped by his disfigurement.

"Or perhaps that my ego has been so badly damaged by being captured by the Bat that I need to seduce an intern to make myself feel all better?"

Even the Scarecrow was beginning to think that perhaps mentioning the intern hadn't been a good idea. He pondered what to do about this.

"You really are bent on being surly," The Penguin said. He was sitting along at a small table playing solitaire, and had previously vowed to keep out of the conversation. However, churlish behavior always annoyed him. "Why not make the most of your imprisonment and have a little fun while you rot?" That was his newest philosophy. He could conquer the cretins of Arkham by refusing to let them extinguish his superior spirit.

"I'd stay over in that corner, Pengy," The Joker said. He stretched a smile on his face like stretching a torture victim on the rack. It was ugly. "I have the sudden inclination to pluck your feathers."

"Alright," The Penguin said mildly, and returned to his cards.

The Joker turned murderous eyes on his other peers. "As for the rest of you, don't be surprised if you drown in your soup. Adieu." He returned to looking out the window.

"Well, that was a waste of time," Two-Face said to The Scarecrow.

The Scarecrow shrugged. "We could have done worse."


	2. The Death Threat

"This is my last day with you, Mr. Napier." Dr. Trenbeau adjusted his glasses.

The stuffy room divided in two by a table. No windows, white walls with hardened drip patterns from the amateur paint job, and two doors, one behind The Joker, one behind the doctor. Ideally, they never even touched.

"Oh, goody." The Joker sneered. He held up his hands, linked together by cuffs. "Parting is such sweet sorrow. What drives you away? Me, or me?"

"I am not driven away. As it happens, we have a new staff member who wishes to take your place, and I have been asked to serve the suicide ward."

The Joker's eyes narrowed. "What new staff member?"

He looked at his chart. "Dr. Quinzel."

"The woman?"

"Er…Yes. I believe she –"

"The intern?"

Dr. Trenbeau winced. The Joker's voice had gone up shrilly. "Yes. I believe that she transferred here with a very prestigious reference. She is the most qualified doctor in the hospital as of yesterday, when she arrived."

"So I don't even rate a real doctor now?" The Joker hissed.

Dr. Trenbeau looked pale. "I am not suggesting –"

"You are!"

"She is at the top of her class."

"I don't care what class she comes from! I'm not some sort of lab experiment!" The Joker stood. "I demand to be transferred to someone else!"

"I'll tell Jeremiah." Cringing, the doctor retreated.

Not without a parting shot, however. "You do that! Tell old Jeremiah if I don't get my way, I'll rip her pretty little head off and put it on a plate! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

--------------------

"You have a death threat." Dr. Jeremiah Arkham stared at the paper he held in his hands without much expression on his face.

"From who?" Harleen's mouth opened in confusion. "I've only started yesterday. I haven't seen any patients yet."

"The Joker." He locked eyes with her. "Are you sure you want to do this? According to Dr. Trenbeau, he's putting up a lot of resistance to the idea."

"Is it because I'm a woman?" Harleen asked indignantly.

Jeremiah was still looking at the note. "It is because you are an intern."

She crossed her arms. "Then make me a doctor. I want to speak to him."

He sighed. "It doesn't work that way."

"Then how does it work?"

"I'll put you on the rounds in each of the wards. When you've completed your internship, we'll discuss your job prospects."

"I…" She looked down, disappointed. "Alright."

_I'll do a really good job! I'll show The Joker I can handle his treatment._


	3. The Isolation Room

The Joker found himself locked in a room with an unfamiliar face, a man with brown eyes. There was something wrong with his eyes. Damned if the Joker knew what, but he definitely got the creepy feeling there was something wrong with those eyes.

"Hello. I'm Dr. Mort."

"Great." The Joker rolled his eyes. "Now I'm stuck with Dr. Death. It's nice to know how much I rate in this loony hospital."

"Pardon?"

The Joker narrowed his eyes. He spelled it out very carefully. "Don't act stupid."

The doctor raised his bushy eyebrows. "I am not acting stupid."

The Joker turned in his seat and called to the guards at the top of his lungs. "I'm done! Get me out of here!"

Dr. Mort folded his hands on the table. "I'm afraid it doesn't work that way." The lines around his mouth and eyes crinkled. "Our session is up when the big hand reaches the nine and the little hand rests on the twelve."

The Joker lunged over the table and started strangling him.

Predictably, the guards saw him on the surveillance tape and bailed out the good doctor before he could choke to death, and they dragged The Joker off to isolation. They didn't even let him walk by himself. They dragged him by his arms. To add salt to his wounded pride, they forced him into a straitjacket before they shoved him into a cell and locked the door. The nerve of them! Stopping him from strangling a despotic, anal retentive doctor.

He stewed for three days before they finally let him out with a warning and brought him back to his usual room.

The senseless, lit-twenty-four-hours-a-day glass display case. He hated this room. He didn't have any privacy. The guards had to watch him pee! Not to mention the other thing! People shouldn't wonder that he made faces at them when they walked past what passed for his room. They stared at him like he was some kind of rare bug.

The guards turned their back on him, walking away with self-satisfied smirks, and said, in plain view:

"What a nutcase."

"Yeah. I don't know why they don't sedate him for good and do everyone a favor."

"Damned clown is foaming at the mouth. Can't even feel a thing. Didn't you see the way he kept getting up on that news report even when someone shot him in the neck? Jesus."

That pretty white and blue haze came back, and he almost swore he could hear children singing some sort of nursery rhyme while he threw himself at the glass wall and pounded his fists into bloody paste.

_Oh, goody_, he thought distantly. _Now the people in coats will come and send me away to happy land with their magic little bee sting. I wonder if I'll kill any of them._

He woke up the next morning with a hangover and bandaged hands. "Bloody Arkham," he muttered. "Bloody stupid asylum. I'll kill them all someday. Just they wait. They'll wake up one morning, and that'll be the end of it all, and Batman will come and there'll be bodies hanging from the ceiling…" A smile slipped onto his face as he elaborated on his fantasy.

His laughter echoed through the cold, sterile hallways.


	4. Art Therapy

Art therapy.

Dr. Jive strolled through the gray-carpeted room, hands clasped behind her back. "Draw whatever comes to mind. Instead of tensing up and trying to think of something to draw, allow yourself to drift back to childhood. Just doodle whatever comes into your mind."

The room smelled like detergent and mold. The art equipment was old, the easels wood. The crayons were soft nubs, and the paints were children's non-toxic. Especially since The Joker was in attendance. Dr. Cray Raymond, his replacement for Dr. Mort, believed in the beneficiary nature of art and music.

The Joker sat at a low table in a plastic chair, left to himself by the other inmates. Some of them weren't even from his own ward. They were just ordinary patients garbed in light blue, dark circles under their eyes and hair meticulously combed.

Dr. Raymond was in attendance, beaming down at The Clown Prince of Crime with a smile best described as a sticker on a blank face.

The Joker narrowed his eyes and smiled back. "Look." He held up his paper, covered in crayon scrawls. "I drew a dog and a cat, and a darling little house, like the one I used to play in when I was a boy."

Dr. Raymond looked mystified. "I see." He blinked rapidly. A dog in orange, a cat in brown, and a square with a triangle perched on top of it drawn in purple. Unremarkable, bloodless, and unrevealing.

The Joker waited.

Dr. Raymond cleared his throat. "Why is the house purple?"

The Joker batted his eyelashes and giggled. "I like purple."

Dr. Raymond sat down in one of the small, uncomfortable chairs. He could do so because of the guards watching every movement. "Tell me why you like purple."

The Joker purposefully evaded his attempts at eye contact, looking up at the ceiling and cupping his chin. "Oh, I don't know, doc…They're like flowers…or cupcakes…or bruises –"

He stopped and put his hand in front of his mouth, widening his eyes. "Oh dear. Did I say bruises?" He couldn't hide his growing smile with the innocent eyes. "Whatever made me say that?" He laughed.

"Oh, doctor, how unfair! You've gotten me to reveal myself! How I am on the verge of being deciphered by your rapier-like wit." He made a tragic, Greek mask face, holding the back of his hand to his forehead like a fainting maiden. "Asking for my favorite color! Genius! Oh, how I have been slain!"

He pouted. "Now you think me a violent brute, based on my words."

Dr. Raymond stared at him.

The Joker lost his smile, draining from the top down from his eyes to his mouth. He picked up a marker and started scribbling on his doctor's face.

The doctor let out a shriek and shielded his face. He fell over backwards in the chair and scrambled away. "Guards! Guards! He's poisoned me! He's got me! He killed me!"

The Joker gave everyone in the room a disdainful look and then faced the whimpering doctor, trying to cower behind a security guard. "Really, old boy, I think you look better with a mustache." He raised an eyebrow. "Purple suits you."

That was the end of Dr. Raymond being his therapist.


	5. The Right Time

The Right Time

--------------------------------

Good behavior, and The Joker was allowed in the day room again. They were only mildly surprised to see him there. Every once and a while, The Joker took to playing angel so that he could get some leg room.

"I hear you've been driving the psychiatrists up the wall," Poison Ivy said, giving him a dirty look. She was playing cards with The Mad Hatter.

"It's your turn, my dear." The Hatter looked up from his hand.

She threw down a card and continued talking to The Joker. "I hear you've been trying to run them all out of town. Why? So no one else can get mental help?"

The Joker laughed and came over to peer over her shoulder. "Don't tell me you're trying to get cured of your plant fascination. I agree, I think you're unbearable, but why the change of heart, cabbage?"

Her eye twitched. "I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the other residents in this loony bin. Some of then would be better off cured. Like Scarface." She pointed to him in the corner.

"He is a sad soul," The Mad Hatter said. He was studying his cards.

The Joker retreated, and claimed a game table devoted to checkers. He had a fascination with the red and the black. He didn't know why, of course, but it amused him.

---------------------

Another day, another meeting with a fresh soul. The room was light green and smelled like lint. Same table dividing the room in two, keeping him and the psychologist apart.

The Joker reclined in his chair, laughing. "What's your name?"

"You're in a fine mood today, Mr. Napier."

The Joker waved his handcuffed hands. "So you caught me on an up day." He grinned.

The young man looked relieved. He couldn't be any older than twenty-five. His dark brown hair was parted to the right, and he had the smooth, unwrinkled face of the still-impressionable. "My name is Frank Stine. You may call me Dr. Stine, or Frank." He held out his hand, and then belatedly realized what he was doing and retracted it. He looked down at his medical notebook and stared at it, writing something most likely just to make it look like he wasn't embarrassed.

Boy, was he going to be fun.

The Joker laughed. "Hoo-hoo! Frank Stine? Your parents must hate you! Tell me all about it! Is your middle initial…N?"

"Frank N. Stine? Like Frankenstein?" The young doctor blushed a little bit. "I, well, I – no. No. My middle name is Raymond."

The Joker clicked his tongue and shook his head. "So disappointing." He cupped his chin in one hand and looked away. "Ah well. Another letdown in the latest string of miseries. So what else is new, Frankie? Got any medication for me?" He turned to stare at Dr. Stine intensely. "You know, everyone's been trying to medicate me since I arrived in this loony bin, but I think they've got it all wrong."

"Oh?" Dr. Stine looked curious.

"Yes. I think everyone else ought to be medicated!" The Joker cackled. "Then I wouldn't have to deal with your sour faces all day long! Ahahahaha!"

"Er…It's a thing to consider…" Dr. Stine dubiously wrote that down in his medical notebook.

"Haha! I like you! You listen to me." The Joker folded his hands under his chin and leaned forward on the table.

After a moment of staring, the doctor finally looked up and met his scrutiny.

"Wanna know something?" The Joker asked.

Dr. Stine fiddled with his tie. "What?"

"I think we have a long history ahead of us." The Joker's crooked grin was filled with the mindless malevolence of a crocodile.

"Oh?"

"Think about it, doc. If you're Frank N. Stine, I'm Frankenstein's monster." The Joker looked at him as though he could see all the insecurities of a young 'Frankie' in elementary school, trying to fit in and avoid the larger boys. His voice lowered, coaxing. "You know…a joke, Frankie. I'm the soulless creation of medical science. You're the doctor responsible for tracking me down and making sure I don't hurt people."

The Joker slammed his hand down on the table. "Isn't that a hoot?" he said loudly.

Dr. Stine jumped.

He barely made it through the last twenty minutes of the session.

The Joker was assigned to Rebecca Tinsley the next day.

--------------------

"He's scaring everyone." Jeremiah folded his hands.

"But what am I supposed to do?" Matilda White was the current director of the ward or the criminally insane.

"You could just take the person responsible for The Joker in the first place!"

Her lips became a thin line. "Jack Napier." She was far better suited to being a high school teacher – middle aged, slightly graying hair, plump, serious face molded by worry lines.

Jeremiah sighed and passed a hand over his forehead. He couldn't help the slip-up sometimes – the acknowledgement of who they said they were in that particular ward as opposed to the names of the people they were supposed to be. "I'm sorry. I've had a long day."

"We all have, dear." She briefly smiled at him. "But I can't solve the problem just by trying to make it go away. Mr. Napier needs a psychologist."

"He's terrorizing them," Jeremiah said. "You can't ignore the fact that he's been trying to get rid of us since the day that he arrived here. We have to take precautions. Dr. Stine was a particularly bad idea."

Her lips thinned again. "Alright, I'll take the blame for that. But I thought that he had enough experience to begin seeing the hardened criminals."

"The J – Jack Napier isn't just a hardened criminal, Matilda. He's a psychopath! He's the most mentally ill person in this institution. When we can keep him here." He passed a hand over his forehead again.

"I am running out of people," Matilda admitted.

Jeremiah dug his hands into his hair. "If only we could get a volunteer. At least then we wouldn't live with the constant worry that we deliberately put an unwilling victim at risk. He almost killed Dr. Nielson, and now she's in Arkansas with her family. I can't keep suggesting people."

Matilda looked at him pityingly. "Jeremiah, duckling, who would volunteer to be the confidant of Jack Napier? You still look for the good, I know. But nothing that good could ever happen. He's our most frightening personality." She sighed. "All he does is drive the new people away, and the veterans know better than to ask for him."

Jeremiah stared at her, but not quite focused on her. "'The new people'…"

She blinked. "What is it?"

He dug around in his files. "Dr. White…I have a new person to transfer to your department. She might just be the person you're looking for."

She frowned. "How so?"

"When she applied here, she expressed an interest in The Joker – Jack Napier. She even wrote an essay about him that was so good it factored into her acceptance here. She's been here for almost three months now. If she still wants to see The Joker…" He found the file and put it on his desk, eyes gleaming. "Then I say let's give him to her."

Matilda folded her hands on his desk and looked skeptical…or deep in thought.


	6. Unorthodox Healing

Harleen's first session.

A dreary light blue room with pastoral scenes hanging on the walls, an unassuming area rug in pink and yellow, a worn wooden desk. That was her side. Across the room, large enough to give the patient space and small enough to give them company, was the sort of uncomfortable upholstered chair found in any doctor's office.

She hadn't intended to start with the harmless, unassuming patients, but the nervous man escorted in by a nurse was oddly fascinating to behold. He was twitching ever so slightly and wringing his hands. His eyes were very wide. They were a light blue, and genuine fear seemed to lurk in their depths. Her first impression was of a man dying of terror. His head was mostly bald, and what was left of his dark brown hair was retreating towards his ears. His glasses were thin, so he didn't have a huge disability, but all the same, she felt he would become very uncomfortable if asked to take them off.

She liked him. She didn't know why.

"I am Harleen Quinzel. I will be your doctor." She smiled at him, making direct eye contact. "Tell me why you're here, Theodore."

His bottom lip trembled and his eyes narrowed immediately. "I want to be called Walter. I want to be c-called Walter."

"Alright, Theodore. I'll call you Walter."

"Walter" was a schizophrenic, and had been since he was nineteen years old. He was forty-five.

She spent the next three months with him trying to convince him to take his medication, and pulling him through his night terrors, phobias, and auditory hallucinations. The one thing she had found was that he really needed someone to talk to. Her job wasn't so much as to treat, but to listen to him and to participate as much as possible in his hallucinations. She didn't tell the rest of the staff, for fear that she would be chastised. But what else could she do? What made "Walter" calmer was having someone listen to him instead of repeatedly telling him it wasn't real. They had conversations with people "Walter" heard or saw. She helped him evade people trying to kill him by discussing self-defense plans, like hiding under his bed or pretending to be someone else so convincingly that they wouldn't know it was him. His symptoms improved. Her colleagues were impressed.

In the end, it was ruled that "Walter" only needed relatively low doses of medication. She convinced "Walter" to take it.

He was doing well.

-----------------

Doctors sang Christmas carols under their breath in the hallways, office doorways were decorated with tinsel, and Harleen had a Santa hat gracing her office desk. The 23rd. Two days away.

She waited in her chair, legs crossed.

A smiling nurse escorted "Walter" through the door, and then waved to him. He waved back as she walked back the way she'd come. The small, balding man closed the door.

Harleen jumped up from her desk and tackled him with a hug. "Hey, here's my friend Walter! How are you?"

He still didn't do eye contact very well. "They say I'm doing well."

She ruffled what was left of his hair. "That's great!"

"Well enough to go home." There was a tremor in his voice.

"Oh, Walter." She felt her eyes actually prickle. She'd never thought she'd grow so attached to someone who she was supposed to be treating. That wasn't professional. "That's wonderful. Who's going to be waiting for you back home?"

"My mother." He looked at her as if he expected her to be angry at his next words. "And my wife."

Harleen finally released him from her hug. "How long has she been waiting for you?"

"F…Five years."

The prickling in her eyes got worse. "She's been waiting for you all this time? True romance. Oh, Walter…That's wonderful."

He smiled and ducked his head. "I guess so."

"Of course it is!" She playfully punched him in the arm. "Get outta here, you big lug! When're they taking you home?"

"Today. At 4:30."

She hugged him again. "Then this is good-bye!"

He looked frightened.

She instantly amended her words. "You call me every day, alright? And don't hesitate to come back if you start feeling worse again, you hear? I'm there for you. I'm your friend."

"Yeah." He smiled again. "I'll tell you about my wife. She's beautiful."

After the session, she was left alone in her office, spinning slowly in her swivel chair and doodling on her notepad. It was really good-bye. What was she going to do now?

As if on cue, Dr. Arkham knocked and opened the door.

She stared at him. "Dr. Arkham! Sir!" She stood up, then sat down, then looked at her skirt and smoothed an inconsequential wrinkle.

"I came to check up on you," he said, smiling. He walked inside a few steps and folded his hands. "You lost your first patient today. I wanted to know how you feel. Of course, everyone wishes that they would lose a patient the way you did – recovery – but you still feel a sense of loss, don't you?"

She nodded mutely. Now that her boss was even saying, she felt it was a crushing blow. Someone she knew, just like that, gone. Forever. Well, not forever. But she hoped it was. It was a strange feeling, and she looked up at Dr. Arkham hoping for a therapy session of her own. She'd never been more confused.

"The trick, if there is one, is to keep moving." He smiled as though he knew how she felt – and he probably did, she realized. His expression became slightly more teasing. "And I know something that should cheer you up, if you've been waiting for it all this time." He winked.

She stared at him. "What…" She didn't even want to speculate.

He handed her the chart tucked under his arm. "An opening has appeared." He was no longer smiling. "The Joker case."

Her jaw dropped. Then she ripped her eyes from the chart in her arms and tried to pay attention to him. It was only respectful. She didn't want to seem rude, not at a time like this. "Why is there an opening?"

"The doctors currently in his ward have refused to see him."

"They can't do that!"

"Actually, Dr. Quinzel, they can. It's only their right, for working with such dangerous people."

"But who would see him as his psychologist?"

"That, my dear, is the point, Dr. Quinzel." He gave her a direct look. "I am asking if you will. Are you still interested?"

Her hands tightened on the chart before she could even consciously respond.

He waited anyway.

"I…I guess. I mean, yes. I mean –" She tried and tried, but she couldn't regain her composure. "You were so reluctant to give him to me!"

He raised an eyebrow with a sardonic smile. "Let's just say I've come around. It's far better to give The Joker a psychologist who wants to see him versus an unwilling doctor."

She smiled. The chart was cradled against her chest.


End file.
